Hotels, Inns and a Castle

We spent all of our nights in places provided by or recommended by our tour company - Back Roads Touring.  None were disasters and in fact with one notable exception to be described later, we always felt welcomed and well cared for.  However, the different accommodations were somewhat uneven in several aspects and not every tour member had equal quarters even in the same location.  Susan and I were in a basement room at the rear of the Churchill Inn in York, but enjoyed a harbor view from an upper floor at the Waterhead Hotel in Ambleside.  While literally below ground level, the basement room had a couple of windows that opened onto, or more specifically into, a walled, sunken structure excavated along the rear of the hotel.  So we could by craning a bit see a patch of sky and some treetops from our windows.  Other than the security aspect of not being elevated above ground level, being up high with a view was not something we had much time to enjoy.  Our schedule of travel and activities kept us on the move and out of our rooms from early morning until sometimes after dark.  This often meant little time between checking in and the call to dinner which meant our blogger had to have her thoughts in order and do some fast keying.  Adding to the stress of time constraints was the uneven WiFi service.  Some of our rooms had very strong signals, but even then the bandwidth might be so narrow as to make timing transactions via an hourglass a viable option.  What a trivial issue to focus on, internet access that is, but most of us have come to take it for granted wherever we may wander and it is essential for maintaining a blog and uploading photos.  It is actually remarkable that such an amenity is feasible in some of the old structures with their thick masonry walls and convoluted floor plans.  In both London and Edinburgh, our hotels were formerly several townhouses that had been extensively remodeled and connected internally.  What makes WiFi difficult was likely also muting noise as we were rarely bothered by sounds even from any nearby streets.

When inquiring about the "facilities" in a restaurant or other public place, do not ask for the "bathroom."  I overheard an incredulous exchange between two employees at one establishment who had just fielded such an inquiry.  It is simply a toilet although I suppose WC would have been accepted without comment.  Some years ago our budget hotel in London had only a couple of "facilities" down the hall.  I would not like to experience such an arrangement again.  All our hotel accommodations on this trip included en-suite facilities that could properly be termed "bathrooms".  However, the configurations for bathing were never repeated in any of our hotels.  This results in a great deal of fiddling about with knobs and levers and dodging errant sprays of too hot or too cold or misdirected water.  We never encountered a simple one or two knob arrangement.  Instead, there might be as many as 4 sparkling, shiny levers lined up vertically on one wall with little or no indication as to how to proceed.  Just to mix things up, one place had an unenclosed tub with a hand-held spray and it took serious concentration to minimize any over-spray.  I really think that some sort of commission needs to set a few standards here.

Now, on to the exception mentioned above.  "The castle" to be specific was Comlongon Castle in what is termed the Scottish Borders, a region actually entirely within Scotland and just south of Edinburgh.  Scotland and the Scots have a long history of being more than a little difficult as neighbors.  The Romans built a wall 77 miles long with towers, forts and many soldiers just to exercise some control over the movements of the unruly hordes to their north.  The castle was and is just an impressively large stone "tower" although its appearance is more block or cube-like.  It was built at a time when the best defense was a really good defense, hence the 12-foot thick stone walls and iron portico gate.  This relatively lawless area between Scotland proper and England was reportedly populated at the time by mostly free spirits who did a lot of kidnapping and cattle rustling when they weren't selling protection to merchant caravans.  Around 1900, with extortion and rustling going out of vogue, a baronial mansion was built next to the actual castle and is now operated as a hotel and wedding venue.  We were shown around and given a short talk on and actually inside the main room of the real castle by a rather disinterested appearing manager or owner.  The information was interesting, but the delivery and apparent attitude of the presenter bordered on contemptuous. Maybe he was having a bad day, or year, or life.  I heard someone say recently that whenever encountering a person who was less than pleasant, he tried to consider that the person might be having the worst day of their life.  Not a bad way to look at such encounters.  The hotel seemed somewhat short-staffed and those who were there did not appear to be the first string.  The breakfast buffet was quite sparse and we were informed that the cook would not be arriving before we left.  A couple of members of the staff attempted to warm up some requested items, but were obviously in unfamiliar territory.  Susan and I are not that hard to please, but some of our fellow travelers were rather vocal about not having their expectations met.  All said, the castle and mansion cum hotel were worth seeing and our bathroom alone was larger than some hotel rooms we have experienced in the U.S.

Waterhead Hotel in Ambleside

Mulberry Inn in Llwynmawr, Glyn Ceiriog, Llangollen

Well stocked mini bar in Mulberry Inn.  Milk, wine and beer.

Baronial Mansion at Castle, our room was third floor triple windows.

Original castle is large cube on left.

Culinary UK

The word  "pudding" for me conjures up images of banana pudding, (Does anyone ever make banana pudding for any reason other than to use up over-ripe bananas?), Jello chocolate pudding and the more recent pudding cups.  Remember how Jello instant pudding would "weep" or separate after being stored?  It still tasted good to a kid though.  Then there is Yorkshire pudding, and steak and kidney "pud", as the character Rumpold called it.  We recently learned that the Three-ways House in Mickleton is proud to be the home of the Pudding Club.  This club meets every Friday night in the hotel dining room and celebrates the traditional English pudding.  Oddly, some puddings are meant to be served with a custard which is also provided.  In fact, their web page mentions 7 gallons of custard.  Our tour group was treated to a private simulation of a Pudding Club meeting, complete with 4 puddings and a tub of custard.  It was all far too tasty and even attempting to minimize servings meant eating far too much dessert after a large dinner.  The custard is used as a topping or accompaniment to certain puddings.  I have always considered pudding and custard to be more or less interchangeable terms.  However, the "New Food Lover's Companion" defines custard as "pudding's eggy cousin - a dessert made with a sweetened mixture of milk and eggs that can be either baked or stirred using gentle heat."  Got that?  Now search for the definition of "pudding" to learn the difference, or lack thereof in some instances.

Later along the tour, we were served Yorkshire pudding with a meat, gravy and potatoes meal.  It was in the shape of a large, crusty muffin with a very light, open texture, almost hollow.  It is basically a lump of very fluffy bread designed to absorb gravy and sometimes served with gravy ladled into a sunken top.  Oddly, you may also be served a roll or other bread with the meal.  A steak and kidney pudding, or pie is described as a savory pudding made by enclosing diced steak and beef, and lamb's or pig's kidney pieces in gravy in a suet pastry.  I never actually saw this on a menu, but I wasn't looking for it either.

Moving on we come to the Lake District and the Waterhead Hotel in Ambleside, Cumbria,  ( I do like the sound of "Ambleside".)  and their most comprehensive breakfasts.  There was a huge selection of both hot and cold items including yogurt, fruit, porridge, dry cereals, breads, etc.  As if that were not enough, one could order all or any part of a full English breakfast from the kitchen.  With a breakfast like that one would obtain a full day's calories in one sitting.  Such a breakfast includes a serving of black pudding which is a gentler way of saying blood pudding.  In Scotland there may also be haggis which appears to me to also meet one definition of pudding.  Displayed alongside the large serving vessel of steaming porridge (oatmeal to us) were two bottles, one with a syrup and one with Scotch whisky.  (There is no "e" in Scotch Whisky.) I could not resist asking a nearby member of the staff why it was there.  I was informed that some people like a little on their porridge.  I suspect some people might even like a bit more.  Mike Cross sang a song entitled "Whiskey fore Breakfast".  

Yorkshire Puddings

Steak and Kidney "Pud"

Ambleside View

I wanted to rent a rowboat, but no time.

A Country of Villages

No further than every 5 miles, and often much less, along any road in England there will be a village, usually with a rather quaint name.  Moreton-in-Marsh, Chipping Campden, Wormington or if in Wales, Llwynmawr in Llangollen.  No, I never picked up on how to pronounce a leading double-l.  Bill Bryson’s fictional “Little Dribbling” isn’t far off the mark as there are many “upper” and “lower” or “lesser” and “greater” qualifiers on place names.  Lower Earley is a suburb of Reading.  A place name which sounds like two adjectives.  Two or more villages, often in close proximity, will differentiate themselves with these qualifiers.  Sometimes the relative sizes will have changed since the names were assigned, but you may be sure that the names were not and will not be changed.  The closely spaced villages combined with a much more relaxed attitude about public access to private land, makes hiking from village to village along footpaths a popular outdoor activity in the UK.  Reportedly, this level of access is still in effect as a holdover from much earlier times when most travel was along such footpaths or oxcart roads.  There are a variety of sheep-resistant gates in fences and walls along these paths intended to maintain order, livestock-wise.  Most are relatively idiot-proof meaning they do not require the user to close or re-secure anything.  We have encountered tight mazes or switchbacks, stepladder-like constructions over walls and even some turnstiles like one might negotiate at a subway stop.  Even so, we often observed sheep grazing or lazing along the roadway verges and our driver, Pip, was very cautious in those situations.  We often encountered hikers at rest stops and pubs in the villages where we stopped.  In addition to serious footwear, including thorn-resistant leggings, many carried one and often two high-tech walking sticks and were often accompanied by canine companions.  Dogs are much more acceptable in public spaces including pubs than is usually the case in the U.S.  The dogs usually lie under the table and pay little attention to their surroundings, nor did we see any begging for food.  We rarely heard a dog bark and never saw one that wasn’t well behaved even in crowded places or when encountering other dogs. The same goes for most of the owners, for that matter.

And there were sheep everywhere we went other than city centers.  When riding we were seldom out of sight of sheep, hundreds at once and of various shades, busily nipping away at the grass just beyond the roadside stone walls and others appearing as tiny white dots far up on the ridges.  At the latest count, the UK had over 32 million sheep out of a global population of over a billion making it the seventh most populous nation, sheep-wise.  By way of comparison, the UK has a population of just over 64 million people and there are 11 US states that are larger than the entire UK.  I refer you to the Wikipedia page regarding sheep.  More than you ever wanted to know:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheep#Economic_importance

Practically every village can be counted on to contain two features.  One will be an old stone church and the other is a pub.  Larger villages may also have a tea room and where there are notable tourist attractions we found various gift and woolen goods shops and maybe other dining options such as a Chinese take-away.  Reportedly, curry has overtaken fish and chips as the most popular take-away choice, but the Chinese shops were usually more noticeable to us.  Whenever we were on the road during what would be considered a rush hour, the traffic in and near the villages was usually rather heavy.  Possibly, the villages function much like our suburban housing developments and residents are commuting to jobs in nearby urban centers.

Retail opportunity in larger village

Village center, Mickleton

Tough place to graze a living.  The glaciers didn't leave much topsoil.

Right beside the Mulberry Inn

Back Roads Indeed

I knew the company is called “Back Roads Touring”, but didn’t think of taking that name literally.  However, other than the slog out of the city, we really did travel almost exclusively on back roads.  

Roads in the UK are classified as M (Motorway), A, and B roads, as well as various categories of more minor roads.  Local authorities may also use C, D and U (Unclassified).  To that I would add “CP” (CowPath).  Some public roads in Britain are no wider than our Raleigh greenway paths.  All were well paved and there are “laybys” every so often to allow two vehicles to barely pass.  Where this gets awkward is when sight distance is limited and the resulting surprise meeting means that one vehicle must reverse to the last layby it passed.  There appears to be some rule or convention as to who must make this sacrifice, but I never worked it out.  Our van would seat 16 passengers in relatively cramped, 3-across seating, so it was by no means a bus.  Still, we sometimes travelled on roads with both side mirrors tickling overgrown hedgerows.  

Hedgerows are just what they sound like, Various combinations of bushy plants that have been trimmed into hedges which can be 10 or more feet in height.  These are generally directly along the roadside, sometimes as close as where our shoulders would be in this country.  There is reportedly some sort of compensation offered to landowners to maintain these features, but compliance appears to be spotty.  This lack of pruning results in the already narrow passages becoming even more so.  Parked vehicles along such roadways and even on narrow streets in villages create more choke points.  Most drivers appear to be on the same page as far as yielding rights-of-way in such situations and a lot calmer and quieter about it than is usually the case here.  Our driver/guide (Pip) was a colorful character who had a sort of Willie Nelson thing going with his hair.  Some days it was a pony tail and other days a single grey braid.  He had been a lorry driver in a previous career and is a Morris dancer and musician in his off time.  The lorry driving experience was evident in his skill at negotiating the aforementioned narrow lanes and at several hotels he backed the van between gate posts with only an inch or so to spare.  

Hedgerows were, and often still are, taking the place of a fence or wall in demarcating a plot of land and/or confining livestock.  They are that dense, enough so that sheep are unlikely to penetrate them let alone cattle.  Some years ago, a forward thinking group got behind a project to replace hedgerows with more modern wire fences.  The result was loss of topsoil from plowed fields to the wind and the creation of a project to regrow hedgerows.  Hedgerows became less numerous as we moved north giving way to mostly stacked stone walls. These walls were supplemented with a row of wire fencing along the tops in some areas. Not so picturesque, but possibly the sheep have been getting better at jumping.

Pip and his "squeeze box". 

Top row, second from right

In side garden of a stately home.  I suppose a boar was more in vogue at that time.

Either hedgerows or stone walls line most roads and define fields and pastures.  The fern in foreground is called "bracken" after it dries out and can be a fire hazard.  I'll look for some heather and gorse pictures another time.

We followed a dairy herd for several minutes.  Note the dog at work but on a lead.  I wonder how you go about numbering a cow's behind?

First day, first impressions

The overnight flight to London was uneventful if cramped and I passed the time alternately doing crosswords, playing scrabble against the robot in my tablet and napping.  Seven plus hours strapped into a coach airplane seat hurtling through the darkness in a metal tube with about 200 strangers.  Still, I suppose it beats passing time on a sailing ship bobbing across the North Atlantic for a couple of months at the mercy of the winds.  I wonder if those ships offered laundry services?  At least jet lag would not be an issue on a ship as it was for us.  Susan had arranged a car and driver for us from Heathrow to the Grange Wellington hotel so we set out into rush hour traffic heading into London.  Being Saturday, the traffic was probably less than on weekdays, but it was still impressive.  Everything from double-decker buses to bicycles were vying for running room along our route.  Oddly, there are two Grange hotels on the same block, but with different second names.  Our driver was as confused as we were until Susan found the address for the Grange Wellington which was just around the corner.  We could not check in until after noon, so we stowed our bags and set out to wander the unfamiliar streets at what was for us about 4 AM, after only an hour or so of fitful dozing on the plane.  Happily, numerous coffee opportunities were available and we proceeded to caffeinate ourselves with espresso beverages.  We then attempted to orient ourselves as to where we were and how best to get to other places of interest.  I seem to have a built-in compass that instantly provides a sense of the cardinal directions whenever I arrive at a new location.  As strongly as this sense makes itself known, it sadly, has never been accurate.  No homing pigeon genes at all.  And it just makes getting properly oriented that much more difficult.

London and most places we visited in the UK are much easier to navigate on foot than most cities in the U.S.  Pedestrian crosswalks are often set back a bit from the intersection and have a pedestrian refuge in a median.  Drivers also seem more likely to observe the requirement to yield right-of-way to pedestrians than in our country. Maybe the large number of surveillance cameras reported to be in the UK makes them more likely to be held accountable.  However, we were also impressed by the friendliness of most of the people we came into contact with.  Shop keepers, wait staff, hotel staff; all were noticeably more friendly and good humored than what we expect in our country.

Another temporary cure for jet lag, at least for me, is eating.  After our coffee and a bit more exploring, we ventured into the Prince of Wales Pub near our hotel and felt we had stepped back in time.  There were locals standing at the bar with pints while telling stories and engaging in sometimes animated conversation.  From what I could hear and understand, much of the discussion related to hard times in the past.  Certainly, from their apparent ages (Contemporaries of myself?) they must have lived through some tough times.  It was in this pub that I first found "warm" beer which I have not encountered in my four previous trips to the UK.  It wasn't bad at all, just cool rather than icy, and I ended up trying two different "halves".  Possibly, more traditional beer is making a comeback, or maybe I have been too sheltered on previous visits.  At any rate, there were usually both traditional and cold taps at most pubs we visited, and we visited a lot of pubs.  The term "pub grub" conjures up dishes like bangers and mash, toad in the hole and pasties.  However, the pubs where we ate, even in small rural communities had comprehensive menu selections.  I had a good vegetarian lasagne at one rural crossroads.  One other aspect of pubs that is very agreeable is that one orders and pays at the bar after noting the number on an available table.  Beverages are passed across the bar and a member of the staff brings the food to your table.

Not heard this expression before

Just part of hotel breakfast buffet

Takeaway is less expensive than eating in